COMMENTARY: Seven days since the beatification, these seven vignettes honor the author of the Seven Last Words.
Seven days out from the beatification of Blessed Fulton Sheen, the afterglow of the marvelous occasion remains. Reporting on the man and the ceremony was comprehensive, yet particular aspects of the events in St. Louis and Peoria seem to me to be worth highlighting.
I propose seven vignettes, organized in honor of Blessed Fulton’s preaching of the Seven Last Words from the Cross, which he did for 58 years on Good Friday.
Father, Forgive Them, For They Know Not What They Do
The first word is the word of Providence — God’s salvific plan working through even the wickedness of men. God, of course, works through good men too, and there were many holy “coincidences” around the beatification. One was that the current bishop chairman of the Pontifical Mission Societies USA — of which Bishop Sheen was the head from 1950 to 1966 — was himself baptized by Blessed Fulton on Oct. 2, 1960. Bishop John Barres of Rockville Centre was baptized by the new blessed because his father — a Catholic convert — worked for Bishop Sheen.
On the Saturday after the
